is an audio and video creator at The Verge since 2015. He has produced shows like The Vergecast, Decoder with Nilay Patel, Why’d You Push That Button, and a variety of Verge video.
Nothing’s first pair of over-the-ear headphones has arrived, bearing the company’s signature retro-transparent design that it introduced with the Phone 1. But until now, that design has mostly been in your pocket or peeking out of your ears. With the $299 Nothing Headphone 1, you have to commit to having that aesthetic wrapped around your head or hanging from your neck.
I spent about a week with the Headphone 1 to see how it fits among the competition — and with your outfit.
The Nothing Headphone 1 resembles a cross between Apple’s AirPods Max and 1980s FM radio headphones. I dig the design, but wearing it on my head feels silly. The housing feels cheaper than the aluminum casing of the $549 AirPods Max and also less… grown up. I’m almost embarrassed to wear it on the street and worried that I’ll look like I’m cosplaying as a cyborg. The ear pads look like that of generic headphones, with rubbery and plastic unremovable pads and a memory foam center. Though I don’t care for the texture, they’re comfortable, and I haven’t felt fatigued while wearing them throughout the day like I do with the Sony WH-1000XM6.
Do I look like a cyborg? Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge Using the paddle switch to change tracks. The roller is just above. Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge
The button design is my favorite part of the headphones. The volume is controlled by the roller, which is like a rubbery wheel you spin, not too far off from Apple’s digital crown, but oriented on its side. Pressing on the roller plays or pauses your audio, and holding it down toggles one of three modes — noise canceling, transparency, or off.
There’s also the paddle button, allowing you to skip tracks, go backward to previous tracks, fast forward or rewind, or hang up or decline phone calls when held down. I have yet to find an app that works with the fast forward / rewind control, but Nothing claims this is dependent on the platform.
A customizable button on the outside of the right ear cup can be set to launch a voice assistant like Google Gemini, use an EQ preset, mute the microphone, control noise, or enable spatial audio. These customizations are done with the Nothing X app (available on iOS and Android). If you use the Headphone 1 with the Nothing Phone 3, you can use that button to “channel hop” between different audio apps — a feature that will eventually be rolled out to other Nothing devices. I wasn’t able to test this, since I don’t have a Phone 3.
It looks very cool when not on my head.
The Headphone 1 features head tracking, allowing you to anchor your position while listening to audio and rotate the panning according to how you turn your head. This is a trend among flagship headphones — like Apple’s spatial audio, Bose’s immersive mode, and Sony’s spatial audio mixing — but it’s not something I ever want to use. It does not sound very believable, and most of the time, it makes the audio sound worse. Much like the worst versions of Apple Music’s spatial audio tracks, it emulates that “stadium” mode from old stereo receivers.
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